The PW Camp

[analog]

I've always maintained you can tell where a great mom lives. The yard is full of little kids' bikes....

a.

[BigJon]

Yep, didn't you always want to be the cool mom?

[dai bread]

What Analog said...

Be glad, and proud of both yourself and Altoid.

[piqaboo]

Want to be, and am are kinda different. I suspect its the grass to hill ratio that is driving the popularity of our house. It ought to increase greatly if we take down the fence.

But thanks for the warm fuzzies!


OT got some great pix but he's preparing for his SDO audition so I havent gotten him over here to post yet.

[OperaTenor]

Altoid has a new friend. After several interactions, we decided to invite her to our home.
Bella is 8 1/2 yrs old, gets along well with Altoid, and seems to do well with Altoid's other friends, 'specially the other 8 yr old.
She's had a couple sleepovers already, and handled them very gracefully.
Maybe I can get OT to come over and post pix as there are a couple really cute ones of them together, playing dress up etc.

Say hi to Bella:



[img=600,450]http://www.operatenor.100megs24.com/bella1.jpg[/img]

she's a coonhound/beagle mix we got adopted from the Helen Woodward Animal Center. She was brought to the center on 2/26 from a rescue shelter in El Centro, in labor, and gave birth to a litter of puppies three days later. She had multiple lipomas in her mammaries, so they performed three surgeries to remove the lipomas and most of her mammaries. She is the sweetest animal I've ever met - totally unflappable about *anything*. She also seems to have been trained some; she's house trained, and knows how to heel, and knows "no."

[piqaboo]

OT was cruising Google Maps Satellite view the other day. We find it amusing that we can pinpoint the day our house was photographed. What a great 5th birthday gift. Thank you google!


[you can see the jumpy in our backyard, from Altoid's bday party last year.]

[GreatCarouser]

OT was cruising Google Maps Satellite view the other day. We find it amusing that we can pinpoint the day our house was photographed. What a great 5th birthday gift. Thank you google!


[you can see the jumpy in our backyard, from Altoid's bday party last year.]

You guys must have very Hi def screen because my shot at 3-400 feet is all blurry

[GreatCarouser]

OT was cruising Google Maps Satellite view the other day. We find it amusing that we can pinpoint the day our house was photographed. What a great 5th birthday gift. Thank you google!


[you can see the jumpy in our backyard, from Altoid's bday party last year.]

You guys must have very Hi def screen because my shot at 3-400 feet is all blurry

[piqaboo]

Cool banner ads. Google has them geographically specific, so all the adverts I am seeing are for sandyeggoland. Nice.

[Haggis@wk]

Being a single malt imbiber........

[Shapley]

Having seen photos of Keith Richards, methinks I'll work my way over to the right side of the chart. Cary Grant was always cool.

[Schmeelkie]

I think Guiness should be a little further north... I wouldn't want to think my husband would be that close to Justin Beiber! And where are red wines on the list? Maybe about middle on the 'hair-on-your-chest', but closer to Cary Grant - that's where I'd see my husband.

[piqaboo]

Kir? Kir isnt manly? But but but ...



I'm baaaack.
And you didnt even miss me.

[Shapley]

Well, I happen to like Bailey's Irish Creme. Call me 'Just an Imbiber'...

[Haggis@wk]

Kir? Kir isnt manly? But but but ...



I'm baaaack.
And you didnt even miss me.

What the hell is Kir? I know, I know, I could look it up but any chance to chat with the delightful Piq is worth the effort.

P.S. Where were you?

[piqaboo]

Kir is Creme de Cassis and dry white wine.
Kir Royale is Creme de Cassis and champagne.

Creme de Cassis is black currant liqueur and is wunnerful stuff.


I was home, weeding stuff out and trying to make room for a Taiwanese teaching intern to move in next week.
She'll be interning at Altoid's school.

Whew - we made it, but it took all 9 days at home to clear enough space, in addition to nights and weekends for the past two months.
I had stuff densely packed in. So much of it was last seen 6-7 years ago, and kept 'just in case'. Well, just in case didnt happen, so entire drawer fulls went away. We're at 2 minivan-loads already gone to the Goodwill store, half a load gone thru FreeCycle, and another load ready to document and ship out, plus 3 recycling bins full (one just with old paperwork kept long past its 'sell by' date). And I have a truckload of baskets that no longer have jobs.

We still havent made homes for all the displaced stuff, but we can open a door that hasnt been accessible since before we bought the house, we were able to move a nice bed into the room, and all that.
I'm really sick of the process, and really liking the results, so I think I'll stick it out and keep on with the process even tho the urgency is off.

Now, we can focus on the good part - the young lady is arriving in a week, and we're quite excited to be her hosts.

We also went to a water park one day (Knott's Soak City), and to the pool on many days. It was a vacation, after all.

[dai bread]

My Private Pianist got married on Monday, to her long-term Taiwanese boyfriend. It was a full-blown Anglican ceremony, all in English, at a very fancy inner-city church in Auckland. Gothic stonework mostly, with a timber ceiling. The bride wore white, and the whole thing had nothing Chinese about it at all. She entered to Wagner, and exited to Mendelssohn, played on the church's rather nice pipe organ, complete with floor-shaking notes. I did wonder briefly about the stonework.

In contrast, the reception that evening was all Chinese, at a Newmarket Chinese restaurant hired in total for the night. Proceedings, such as they were (there were only 2 speeches, translated this time) were in English, as was the conversation at my table. There were several other Caucasians there, along with some Samoans and at least one person from the Middle East.

We Caucasians had all expected to have to smile politely while not understanding a word, but it turned out to be a very enjoyable afternoon and evening. Mind you, about the only people there who didn't speak English were the bride's parents, and even they had some of the language. They put me up in a hotel room, at the Stamford Plaza. The Tenors stayed there on their last night in NZ. It's a nice hotel.

[Schmeelkie]

Street-wide garage sale this Friday and Saturday, so I'm with you Piq on going through stuff. Been spending the kids 'movie time' each evening in the basement sorting stuff out. Hoping to get rid of all the stuff I cringed about moving last year. Peeved at myself for having to move stuff that we didn't need. Maybe this can motivate me to get through a bunch of boxes of papers from undergrad and grad school. Anyway, here's hoping my basement is much more empty by end of day Saturday! Will ask my pregnant officemate if she needs any of the baby stuff that doesn't sell. Might hold onto some clothes (only trying to sells jackets, winter gear as baby clothes don't tend to sell well) to see what gender baby is - they're not finding out. Already was able to give her about 7 maternity tops - horrid to have to spend all that money for clothes you wear for a few months....hoping to sell some of that too. It's mostly all baby/maternity stuff, plus old microwave and window AC unit.

[piqaboo]

The intern from China arrived Monday. Her travels involved a little adventure - she arrived in SF, went thru customs, thus coming out "outside" security with all her bags for a 6 month stay, only to learn her flight was cancelled. She arranged a new flight, and got to SD 5 hours later than expected, and still in a good mood.
She's a neat kinda person and its being a treat to host her. School starts on Tuesday. One of the immersion teachers was hired only 3 days ago, and the entire program is new, so the Mandarin-speaking staff have been hard at it getting ready, and she was whupped yesterday.

I met Altoid's homeroom (aka mandarin immersion) teacher for the first time, this morning. She was teaching a puppet how to say "hello, my name is ___". I think Altoid will do well with her. I may have to pick up some slack on the science lessons, and research what is typically covered in 1st grade. I think they will be very challenged to cover the entire normal curriculum in the normal time, because these kids were not immersion in K, so there's a lot of vocab catch-up to do. Math should be ok, because they've learned to count to 999 last year (mandarin has a lovely logical nomenclature for the numbers. Its like english, but without the pronunciation shifts for things like fifteen (should be five-ten), twenty, etc).

Both OT and I had to miss the instructions to the parents this am - I was the only one 'on call' at work, and he ended up de facto playground monitor.
So we have no idea what the game plan is re homework. Oh my!

[piqaboo]

The PTA. Oh my.
Our current PTA consists of 0 teachers (how could teachers be involved? We meet during class hours),
4 SAHMs and me. Ok, one of the SAHMs works 2 nights a week, 3 hours a night, and has to do some prep work for that.
All 4 of the others are 'drop everything and do it now' types. I am going to benefit from being exposed to that. These ladies Get Stuff Done!
I am more of a 'when I can fit it in' type, because I need to spend too long thinking about everything instead of just doing.
Nevertheless- we cant meet before school because they have to get the kids ready. We cant meet in the evening because they have to do dinner w the kids. We cant meet in the afternoon of the shortday (aka lunchtime) because they have to drive to gymnastics. They were totally surprised that I had to take a vacation day in order to attend a 2.5 hour PTA board meeting on a work day, since none of the other options could pan out.

Its gonna be an interesting year.